Great blog post - "Re-mystifying wine"

can you give an example?

i’ve never thought of wine as inherently complicated – certainly not mystified. sure, to achieve a higher level of knowledge, you need to experience a lot and perhaps do some reading. but most – if not all – of that is totally trivial and fodder for mostly inane conversation among cork dorks.

in dealing with friends and family that are curious about my enthusiasm, i find that you could teach someone most of what they’d need to know about wine in about an hour. tops.

i made the mistake - again - of replying to this thread before reading all of it. Pat makes the same point that I tried to, more eloquently.

Wine Mystification is like matter - it can be neither created nor destroyed.

Well, I think it would be much more appropriate to compare to listening to music, not playing it. Anyone can sit down and enjoy a good bottle of wine or a good piece of music without any practice at all. The beginner may not have the same appreciation or depth of experience that an expert has, but neither of these experiences invalidates the other one. Wine-made-simple has its place, it’s just not going to get much interest here.

Exactly

This and I also think people will find the level of interest that best fits them. A class in ‘de-mystifying’ wine might be just the thing that gives the untapped wine geek the idea that there is something to this wine appreciation thing and will make them want to explore further. For others, it might be a fun day with their friends trying different wines. Something that they like to do but see no reason to delve into any further than that. We can’t assume that every person is interested in wine as a hobby for exploration like we might. We can’t even assume everyone likes wine.

Sure, anyone is physically capable of sitting down and listening to, say, Beethoven, but if you haven’t trained yourself for it you will very likely find it fantastically boring and get nothing out of it. So the question is, what do you say to that person? Something reassuring like, “If you find it boring, then it’s boring! Listen to what you like! Music is simple!” Or do you tell them that there is a lot more to the piece than a novice can glean by just sitting down and listening and if they want to understand why there is a long road to travel?

Again, nobody is saying that anyone is obliged to become an expert in anything that does not interest him. The issue is whether we are willing to admit that there are rewards to expertise and no shortcuts to them.

I think that, by talking in generalities we’re talking past one another a bit. I don’t believe anyone has an issue with introductions to wine of various sorts as long as they’re introductions. That is, as long as they make it clear that they are serving as a base of knowledge that lets the reader branch off and find out more.

There’s a very real difference between these approaches:

“Here’s a bunch of good basic knowledge… now you can navigate a wine store, read a list in a restaurant with some confidence and use this information as a basis for further exploration if you want to.”

versus

“See? Wine’s simple, we told you all you really need to know in 228 pages! Those snobby wine geeks are just trying to look down on you - wine’s simple and you now know everything you really need to know.”
If the current crop of guides leans to the latter formulation, then they’re doing a disservice to the reader. The former stance? Eh, everyone starts somewhere.

I liked Beethoven from the get go. What training would someone need? Im not sure I understand the analogy.

But, Berry, if you educate yourself in music you’ll understand Beethoven (or Miles or…) at a different level than the “I like it” level. Being able to pick out the theme, follow the variations on that theme and then the recapitulation of the theme in a sonata adds something to it. You might still like the music without that, but knowing it adds depth.

I remember standing in front of a very nice Dutch painting of a family. Well done, nicely composed and a great example of the art. But some clue in the picture (I can’t remember what) was an indication that the wife in the picture was expecting. If you knew to look for that it added something and made the happy expression on her face more meaningful.

Now, not everyone cares about each of our interests at that level - I might want to simply revel in the majesty of a Beethoven symphony and not worry about the intellectual accoutrements. Others might want to debate the fine points of how certain tempo choices subtly alter the meaning or feel of a passage.

Maybe. But I’ve like Beethoven from a young age (my father played classical music constantly at home) even though studying would have made me appreciate it more.

I keep thinking about my wife and me. I’ve been a wine fanatic for coming up on 40 years now (although I now find my fanatacism waning in favor of drinking). My wife loves wine and she knows none of the details (and isn’t interested in knowing them), but totally enjoys the experience. There is a distinction from the focus of the article in that she doesn’t care about what she knows or doesn’t know. I think any attempt to demystify “expertise” is misdirected, and Lord knows people blow harder with little expertise on wine than just about any other subject (my greatest battle when training new wine sales people).

But some times, and to some people, wine is just a beverage.

The more you taste wine, the more you appreciate good wine. When one first tastes a great wine, they think: “what a delicious drink, I’ll have some more.” Whereas after tasting a lot of good and not so good wine–after learning a bit–one is able to appreciate what makes the wine great and what makes it unique. This is a deeper level of enjoyment and the reward for study.

The same is true with classical music. The first-time listener hears Beethoven and thinks it sounds beautiful. But after listening to tons of classical music, it’s much easier to see what makes Beethoven great, to pick up the nuances, to compare him to others in his time, see who he was influenced by, see who he influenced, etc. This again is a much deeper, and more rewarding, level of enjoyment.

In my opinion, Keith (and the blog post’s author) are suggesting that by “de-mystifying” wine too much, wine writers suggest that the first-order “this is delicious” impression is all there is. The idea that it’s fermented grape juice and only what you make of it. Which of course, is false. Wine, like classical music (and many other things), is a pursuit deep enough to reward study and experience.

There seems to be a belief here that reading a book which claims to simplify wine may limit or block the development of people new to wine. IMHO, if wine is really as deep and complex as you say then folks who try wine will be led along naturally to find out more until they reach a point where they are satisfied. Anything that generates an interest in trying is o.k. The original book will be forgotten or maybe remembered with some amusement by someone who pursues the hobby vigorously.
It’s hard to see what value there is in any writing that tells readers that wine is a big, serious complex field that you can try to understand but probably won’t really even after years.

Pat

I understand Keith’s point but Beethoven is a poor example. It’s like Chateau Margaux - if any given neophyte is at all inclined to like the general topic, they are going to like these right off the bat.

I agree wine, like most sensory stimulants, is complex and worthy of contemplation at some level by nearly all whom enjoy it. As mentioned above demystifying wine is largely a function of capitalism, mystifying it often a function of elitism.

The making of wine at the vinicultural or vinification level is clearly worthy of a life’s pursuit; the tasting and study of wine along with the subsequent multi-media criticism, like pure criticism of nearly any human endeavor, is not IMO a noble career.

I will assume English is not Anton’s first language but if publishing the written word please learn the difference between It’s and Its, pedants everywhere will thank you.

I don’t find that true for either one. Beyond a few recognizable riffs such as the 5th or the 9th, my bet is that the average listener plopped in a seat for 90 minutes of Beethoven would bore very quickly. As for Margaux, I have been drinking Bordeaux very regularly for over a dozen years now and I still haven’t grokked Margaux. I certainly never found anything to love in it right off the bat.

Best post here. You can take the article a couple of different ways; but if the point is that the industry (or wine community as it were) should in general take it upon themselves to do a better job of educating without the necessity of dumbed-down marketing or an overly formal approach, then I feel it makes an OK point.

Overwhelmingly the whole purpose of these campaigns is not just to get people to buy wine, it’s to give those buying cheap wine the confidence (perhaps false) to buy more expensive wine.

Ive never taken any music appreciation classes nor read anything on the theory of musical composition yet all that is intuitive to me. I’d like to say its because I am a brilliant genius but the truth is that I enjoy the subject so I just pay attention to what Im hearing. To create music with nuance takes education but I don’t think education is necessary to enjoy it. Thats been my experience at least.

I think the one thing someone gains with education/experience is a shorter road to narrowing down subjective preferences.

If everything about music appreciation is intuitive to you, you probably chose the wrong line of work! I’m sure if you did some reading in the area you’d find that there’s quite a lot more that you never thought of.

I think the one thing someone gains with education/experience is a shorter road to narrowing down subjective preferences.

That’s it? just that one thing?

on the subject…

What would be some examples?

What else is there that one gets from experience?